‘Mommy blogger’ convicted of slowly poisoning toddler while she wrote about his illness

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WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — A jury on Monday convicted a “mommy blogger” of slowly poisoning her son to death while she wrote about his health struggles online.

A White Plains County Court jury found Lacey Spears, 27, guilty of second-degree murder in the death of her son Garnett, News 12 Westchester reported. The child was five at the time of his death.

Spears documented Garnett’s many ailments over the years, including ear infections, unexplained fevers, seizures and digestive problems. But it’s now believed that Spears fabricated many, if not all, of the problems, the Journal News reported.

Garnett finally died in the hospital on Jan. 23, 2014. Spears argued that poor care from doctors doomed her son, but prosecutors argued that there was no medical explanation for shockingly high sodium levels that killed the child — unless his mother had been adding salt to his feeding tube.

The jury agreed.

An earlier probe suggested that Spears suffered from Münchausen by proxy– a disorder that drives a parent to fake a child’s illness for attention — but prosecutors did not ultimately use that angle in court.

Investigators stumbled across other apparent lies. Perhaps the most notable: Spears told readers that the father of her son was a police officer who was killed in a car crash. But in reality, Garnett’s father is a garage door mechanic who is still alive. He claims that Spears lied to him about whose child she was carrying and then moved his son hundreds of miles away from him without his knowledge.

Spears faces up to 25 years in prison. Her lawyer said he was “shocked” by the guilty verdict and will appeal.